Thriftcrafting: Witching on a budget

Merry meet!

Sales have been going on for weeks, discounting Halloween merchandise and making it possible to stock up on items you can use not just at Samhain, but perhaps throughout the year. One of my favorite decorations, however, costs nothing.

Samhain is the final of the three harvest festivals as well as the pagan “New Year’s Eve.” For me, it has always been a solemn time acknowledging that there is no more bounty as the earth shuts down and readies for the deepest darkness, and a quiet time of honoring the ancestors.

Since I celebrate the first two harvests with what my garden has to offer, I do the same at Samhain. Rather than cosmos or tomatoes, I pick dried cornstalks and dead weeds.

I found a beauty in their simpleness. Placed in the same vase that had held life bursting with color, the bouquet was my way of honoring the turning of the wheel to the end of the growing season, to the end of the year. Death was becoming visible, but beyond it was the remembrance of spring’s rebirth.

It seemed the perfect arrangement for an ancestors altar, alongside photos of the dead and candles lit in their honor.

I made up small arrangements and placed the vases where I had displayed flowers during the height of the summer. I also tucked the dried weeds, seed pods and such into a grapevine wreath that was then hung on the door.

Merry part.

And merry meet again.